This invention relates to a machine for preparing a finished food product. More particularly, this invention relates to a machine for cooking discrete food articles such as bagels.
The tastiest parts of certain baked food products such as muffins and bagels are those which are browned owing to exposure to an oven's convection currents. In eating muffins, people frequently separate the crowns from the bodies of the muffins in order to savor the enhanced flavor of the crowns. Likewise, in eating bagels, some people characteristically remove the inner, doughy parts of the bagel and eat only the shell, either alone or with filling such as a cream cheese and scallion spread or a salmon spread. Where a bagel is used to make a sandwich type food item, the hollowing out of the bagel provides the additional advantage of reducing the amount of filling that is squeezed out from between the bagel halves when the consumer bites into the bagel. Concomitantly, a hollow bagel is able to accommodate a greater amount of filling material.
A problem with the conventional manual method of removing dough from the interior of a bagel is inconvenience to the consumer. Another problem is waste that occurs when the removed interior dough is discarded rather than eaten.
Although certain food products such as doughnuts are frequently made with hollow interiors, into which a cream or fruit filling may be deposited, the method by which that hollow interior is formed is not applicable to bagels. Doughnuts can be made from a dough which separates during deep frying to produce an interior chamber. Bagels are cooked by an initial boiling step and a subsequent baking step. Bagels with hollow interiors will not naturally form during the two-step cooking process.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,807,599 describes a method for making a food product which utilizes an aliquot of dough disposed in a predetermined shape about a cooking member made of a material which has a chemical composition essentially impervious to cooking temperatures. The dough is cooked, e.g., boiled or baked, at a predetermined temperature for a predetermined period. The cooking member is maintained in the dough during the cooking thereof. After the cooking of the dough at the predetermined temperature for the predetermined period, the cooking member is removed from the cooked dough, thereby creating a chamber in the cooked dough.
Generally, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,807,599, the dough is molded about the cooking member to form the predetermined dough shape about the cooking member. Alternatively, the cooking member may be inserted or pressed into a lump of the dough.
According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,807,599, the cooking member is an elongate member made of a flexible material such as silicone. In that case, the elongate member may be bent to assume a desired form such as a circle. The dough generally conforms to the bent cooking member. The dough has a toroidal shape when the cooking member is bent into a circle.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,807,599, an end of the elongate member is left protruding from the uncooked dough form. After the dough is cooked, the elongate member is removed from the dough by grasping the protruding end of the elongate member and pulling the elongate member from the cooked dough. An edible filling may be injected or otherwise deposited into the chamber of the hollow dough cooked product after the pulling of the elongate member from the cooked dough.